… There isn’t a moment that you can take your eye off of it. The Athletic: When are you conscious of the clock, and when are you not? I’m now going to turn the rest of this section over to him, because this is epic. So last week, I asked Mets ace and noted deep thinker Max Scherzer that question. I’ve been wondering how conscious players are of the clock while they’re playing. Then again, you’re just watching these baseball games. But you’ll typically notice it only when it’s racing toward zero. Just as the 24-second clock blends into the rest of your NBA viewing experience, the pitch clock won’t quite disappear. I mention that because some day, that’ll be you. The tick-tick-tick of the pitch timer eventually faded so far into the background for most of them, they were hardly conscious it was there. They came to watch baseball, and that’s what they watched. I was surrounded by thousands of people who, after a little initial staring, paid almost no attention to that clock. I watched the pitch clock as closely as I’ve ever watched anything in baseball in my life. But it will not be March or April of 2023. Maybe someday, some week, some month, some year, you will stop thinking about the numbers 15 and 20. Fifteen seconds to deliver a pitch with nobody on base. They’re the numbers that are about to appear on a pitch timer near you - or near Max Scherzer - 300 to 400 times a game, every game. WHAT THEY MEAN: There are no numbers that will be more deeply embedded in your baseball brain this year than these numbers. Read more: Ken Rosenthal looks at the top 10 biggest storylines this season The Magic Numbers: 15/20 What do you say we commemorate it with an all-new-rules edition of the annual Numbers That Define Baseball column? OK, done! So in honor of a version of baseball in which the way guys played all their lives is now officially “weird,” welcome to Season 1, Episode 1 of this version. I was, like, what is this? This is so weird.” We could do so many different things again. “I went back to the (World Baseball Classic),” said the Mets’ Francisco Lindor, “and I was, like, damn, I feel like I’m playing a game from 10 years ago. And even after six weeks of spring training, most MLB players have seen the future - and like it. But just like every other sport, baseball can’t be afraid to do what it has to do to create the most watchable, entertaining version of its sport that it’s possible to create. If you hate all this, switch over to Netflix. I think once you see baseball with a clock, you might never want to see it without a clock again.”Īll right, so that sentiment isn’t unanimous. I think we’ve seen progress in so many different aspects around sports, and around life, and around our everyday things that we do, that this is going to be just a part of that. “There’s going to be a generation of fans that is building right now that are going to consider this the new normal,” Tigers manager A.J. Read more: Inside MLB’s rule changes: Theo Epstein on what’s stood out, what’s next and more Won’t this go down as the year that changed everything? So in 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, I think it’s clear what people will think when they look back on baseball in 2023. … Even the bases aren’t as far away from each other as they used to be. … Pickoff limits igniting long-lost running games. … Shift bans opening holes we haven’t seen in a decade.
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